Help: Enabling users to set up mail redirect for their email

[DeathAndPain]

We have an internal network with a Linux mail server (sendmail). The end users are running Win NT 4.0 with a normal SMTP/POP3-Client on their machines with which they send and receive their mail.

However, when someone is on vacancies, he needs to redirect his incoming mail to somebody else, and I wonder how that can be achieved. Right now, the administrator (that's me) can use webmin and alter the alias settings in order to perform the redirect. But the administrator having to care for that is not really a viable approach; the end users should be able to do it on their own.

Trouble is, although they have their accounts on the mail server, they are Windows users that never log into the mail server (other than POP3 through their email software). They would not be able to handle a Linux login shell in order to alter their mail settings.

Does anybody know a good approach to solve this? For instance, is there a HTTP-based tool (similar to webmin) that allows setting up an email redirect for the user's own account (without requiring admin privileges)? (How do other companies solve that when they are running a Linux mail server in a Windows environment?)

[bclark4444]

Im not sure what client you are running (other than it being pop3). I use MS Outlook and i can use the 'Out Of Office Assistant' under the 'Tools' menu to set up auto forwarding of my emails. The one issue with this is that i would have to keep my computer booted and have Outlook running while i was gone. Hope this helps (at least a little).

[kkubasik]

I believe that you can pass your mail to a filter/delivery agent such as procmail. While i don't know if procmail supports forwording directly, you could cron a script to forword all mail in a specified folder.... But i do know that most sendmail variats support some sort of forwarding, just use aliases to another machine.

[DeathAndPain]

The one issue with this is that i would have to keep my computer booted and have Outlook running while i was gone.

And that is the problem. End-users on vacancies will hardly leave their machines running for weeks (and even if they tried, power is turned off for the whole house at night). Only a server-side approach will work, because only the server is guaranteed to be running all the time in a real scenario.

But i do know that most sendmail variats support some sort of forwarding, just use aliases to another machine.

Thank you for trying to help, but you have not understood the problem. We are talking end users here, which are using their Windows clients and never get to see the Linux mail server. I have no problem setting up an alias on the mail server, but I need a solution through which the end-users can do it on their own (without learning to use a Linux shell and handling the vi first).